


MAN OF HIS WORD

by cutterjohns, Grendoc



Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street (Movies 1984-1994), A Nightmare on Elm Street - All Media Types, Watchmen (2009), Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: 1980s, Also Freddy Survived, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Budding Relationship, Canon Rewrite, Character Death, Crossover, DanRor, Divorced Freddy, Family, Found Family, FredDan, FredDanRor, FredRor, Freddy Krueger was Framed, Freddy Krueger was Innocent, Friendship, Gallows Humor, Horror, Human Freddy Krueger, Hurt/Comfort, It'll Play Itself Out Eventually, Just major canon divergence, M/M, M/M/M, Mentions of Child Abuse / CSA, NOBODY DIES PERMANENTLY DON'T WORRY I'M NOT THAT BIG OF AN ASSHOLE I'LL SPOIL THAT RIGHT AWAY, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Prison Meeting, Rorschach Feels, Stick With Me Folks, Temporary Character Death, Warning for That if Nothing Else, Watchmen - Freeform, oh also I hate tagging things but additionally, slowburn, wholesome gay love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:53:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24928720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutterjohns/pseuds/cutterjohns, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grendoc/pseuds/Grendoc
Summary: Rorschach always comes back to him.Rorschach is a man of his word.
Relationships: Dan Dreiberg/Freddy Krueger, Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach, Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach/Freddy Krueger, Freddy Krueger & Loretta Krueger (Divorced), Rorschach/Freddy Krueger
Comments: 21
Kudos: 42





	1. SOLITARY

The man he’d given a grease bath earlier that morning lies dying in the ICU when Rorschach is dragged out of therapy and into the maximum security ward.

Guard’s hands are rougher on his wrists than they are with most prisoners. Their jaws are set. Faces pale. Won’t look at the small man set between them, who won’t look at them. First thing Freddy notices is that they’re scared. Second thing he notices, staring long down the hallway, is that one of them is talking.

He got good at reading lips, after Kathryn was born.

“Real creep,” promises a man in uniform. “Twenty kids.” Freddy’d be more bothered by it if Rorschach seemed to be listening. He didn’t, save for the subtle standing of the hairs on the back of his neck, the prickle of distrust.

Confinement here was meant to be solitary, but the prison squirms with inmates like rats in a box, overstuffed and twisted by state of emergency. Freddy’s door opens. They throw Rorschach in with him like they expect a dogfight. Linger to watch.

Nothing.

Rorschach stands in the center of the cell for a very long time, trying to out-stare the wall. Then, quietly, he sits on the edge of the toilet seat. Freddy’s bright green eyes flicker up from the seventy-sixth page of _The Anti-Christ_ , scan once, drop down again. His glasses are cracked. Rubber stoppers glued to the ends of the thin wire arms, as if it’d make things any safer for him in here.

He scans the same passage four times, then finally lifts the lenses into his hair, folding the book shut around a candy-bar wrapper.

“Was wondering when they were gonna lock you up tighter,” he chimes, like a _bet-on-it_. Rorschach’s empty eyes have narrowed their focus. Now it’s the ceiling that suffers his wrath, analyzing cracks like he could crumble concrete with his concentration. Maybe he could.

Eyes turn down on Freddy, blue as ice, and apprehension curls in his gut.

The way Rorschach’s body is coiled reminds Freddy of a nature documentary Kathryn had forced him to watch with her – the tiger’s shoulders stiff in the shadow of a larger cat, eyes huge, swallowed in the darkness of a pupil that swallowed everything it could see. He doesn’t know which one of them counts as prey. A bellow from down the corridor urges Freddy to **_FUCK HIM RAW! PEEL HIS SKIN!_**

Freddy shudders.

Rorschach looks at the ground again, rigid but apparently bored.

“You learn to ignore it,” offers Freddy.

“Ignore what?”

“… Nevermind.”

Childhood taught Freddy that numbness keeps you sane enough to pretend. Maybe Rorschach’s offered the same lessons – or maybe he really didn’t hear it. Freddy can’t decide which option’s the one that makes his skin crawl most.

“You know me,” comes the growl, interrupting a stretch of silence Freddy hadn’t realized he’d fallen into. “Don’t know you.”

“Krueger,” suddenly breathless. “Freddy.”

“Freddy.” Nod. Licking the thin line of his lips. Curling, knees to chest, shirt-tail dipping into the toilet water. He looks cold. “Rorschach.”

“Rorschach,” Freddy answers.

“Freddy,” affirmed.

Krueger rolls onto his side on the cot, helping himself to a longer look. Chubby cheek cradled in his hand. Elbow propped up, digging into the paper sheets. “You pop a guard in the mouth, or what?”

“Broke glass in buffet line.”

“That all?”

“Gave fat man last shower will ever have. Water was too hot,” rolling his shoulders. “Should call plumber.”

Freddy’s lips stretch into a smile with too many broad, yellow teeth. “I like you,” nose twitching like a hare. “You’re a real joker.”

“Wasn’t joking.”

Freddy’s smile only broadens.

_“I know.”_


	2. SENSATION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can play nice. Nice enough to make it.
> 
> Probably.

“Therapist quit today.”

Freddy looks up from his book, a sparse sliver of the novel remaining. He pinches the unread portion between his ring finger and his pinky, then sets the book open-face-down on the bed, sitting criss-cross, facing the oddly sullen face of the prophet of doom.

“We’ve all been there,” Freddy says, like the state of humanity’s collective conscience is meant to comfort him. Nimble fingers itch a clean-shaven chin, and Freddy finds himself mourning the destruction of a certain set of cat’s-paw razorblades. “Do you think they were looking for an excuse?” It’s been days, and days were all it took for him to realize that Rorschach didn’t pose a threat. To him, at least.

Yet.

“To?”

“Throw you in here.”

“Yes,” gruff and stubbly and curly haired. Rorschach on a good day isn’t one for conversation. On a day like today, it’s a miracle he talks at all. “Next time will take excuse to fry me in chair. Not sticking around to give one.”

But that’s fine. He can play nice. Nice enough to make it.

Probably.

Pipes leak, building groans with age and overcapacity. Grease-face is on death’s door, last Rorschach heard. Whispers of revolution. Lust for blood thick between men who’ve grown sick of each other and the same grey walls. The rats are gnawing, the writing’s on the wall. (Rorschach’s wall says “CHINA WHITE.” Efforts to scrub it out with his coveralls fruitless.) Contentment disrupted, unease set out between the trapped-with-him – it’s death or the doorway.

Rorschach knows which one they’re going to pick.

“Fit to burst in matter of weeks.” A drink of water from the tap, with his hand. “Weeks at most.”

Freddy drops down from the cot. Needs the toilet. Rorschach pointedly looks away, down the corridor, past the banister, as if memorizing the height of the fall. “You think we’re looking at a prison break?”

“Think walls shook today.” Piss trickles into the toilet bowl and Rorschach’s lip curls at the sound. He waits for the zip of a finish-line before continuing. “Realization of danger like earthquake through infrastructure, rattling teeth.” Freddy makes an affirmative sound that tells Rorschach he can turn to face him again, but he stays staring, arms crossed over his chest. For his part, Freddy’s eyes drift off to the side, like he’s talking to somebody else.

“I’ve thought about it. Hitting one of those piggies and making a break.” Something about the way Rorschach’s spine straightens says he’s listening. “Too obvious for me, though,” and Freddy’s face sags with Rorschach’s posture. “Trying to lay low.”

Disappointment thickens between them. Rorschach stays statuesque; Freddy starts to pace.

“They think I killed about twenty kids,” like it’s an explanation for his cowardice. Rorschach knows the story the prisoners told, but a detective hears every side of a story – and he’s the best goddamned detective in the world.

His pupils shrink anyway, hands balled into fists. Principle.

“And you didn’t?”

He can feel the grimace cross the other man’s face without ever having to see it. A darkness passing over. Disgust, at first – then anger. Familiar. Something Rorschach can understand. Something that isn’t tears. His cellmate’s head snaps forward, a vein bulging through the dip in his temple. White-hot fury, disbelief. “No,” he hisses – “No, I didn’t. Have my own kids, wouldn’t even fucking think about –”

“Was framed too,” Rorschach cuts, and Freddy shuts his mouth.

It’s a long moment before Freddy has the balls to ask him what for, and another before Rorschach has the patience to answer him.

“Charge leading to imprisonment. Murder of prior criminal. Not the rest.”

He had murdered the Roche killer. He had left the body of a serial rapist at the front steps of the NYPD’s central office like a cat abandoning the twisted corpse of a vole. He had carved into the body of a human trafficker, serial killer, both – but they hadn’t charged him for that. They’d charged him on the one thing he hadn’t done; leveled the playing field so they could feel a little bit safer, working on charges for the rest.

Justice for dead men while the living squirmed in a cement block with bars in the windows, half belonging six feet under, the other half caught on dope charges and unpaid traffic violations.

Or framed.

Freddy clears his throat.

“Adds up,” he says, and rubs his hands together, as if it’ll get rid of the chill crawling through his limbs. “Cops set people up all the time. Drop some evidence in your workshop, suddenly you’re behind bars and the most hated motherfucker in your state.” Freddy stares at his fingernails, the slightly bloodied nubs remaining of the whites. “Not even from New York,” he says – “I’m a fucking Clevelander, man.”

“Transferred you?”

“Thought I was too dangerous.”

“Hurm.” Rorschach’s arms drop to his sides. Hands find the insides of the pockets of his coveralls. Burrow there. “Will come with me,” he decides, and doesn’t explain.

“What?”

Rorschach begins to rifle through the stack of reading material on Freddy’s toilet tank.

“Do have magazines that are not pervert magazines?”

Freddy hesitates, reaches under his pillow like he’s hiding a dirty secret, and tosses him a _Cosmopolitan._

Rorschach stares at it like he’s been handed something undecipherable, then throws it back. “Breasts.”

“Hey, you asked.”

“Still dirty magazine,” he argues, because of course he does. Freddy rolls his eyes and snatches it up from its landing place, pointedly opening it to a column on workplace dress.

“That’s different. This one’s about _life advice.”_

A beat.

“And how to give killer orgasms.”

“Give it back, then,” Rorschach says, outstretching his hand. “I’ll hate it.”


	3. SHORT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Red.”
> 
> “Like your hair?”
> 
> “Like yours."

“Kids’ names?”

He isn’t reading any of it, but Rorschach’s eyes favor the motion of scanning a page. Having something to focus on that isn’t someone else’s body – quiets his mind. Lets him think. When he can think, he can talk. When he can talk …

“Kathryn and Leo,” says Freddy, a touch of something in his voice that Rorschach forgot how to feel a very long time ago. “We call our girl Kat.”

“Good names.” Page-flip, pointlessly. “When see them again, tell them Rorschach says hello.”

The smile that finds Freddy’s face is small and weary. He thinks of Loretta’s dark eyes on him and scratches himself behind an ear. It fades fast as her entire face comes clearly into his mind’s eye, the memory of her scowl a harsh stab of reality. “Don’t know about that, Holmes. Ex-wife’s made it pretty clear she doesn’t want me anywhere near those two.”

“Will talk to her.” The flicker of light in his eyes speaks to mischief. He’s joking. Mostly.

“Careful,” Freddy says, unable to help a snicker. “She’s about as tough as you are fragrant.”

Rorschach blazes a path through several more pages in the following minute’s time, only looking at the pictures. Flipping fast past scantily clad women. Bra adverts. Feminine health. Shirtless man. He lingers, there.

“Favorite color.”

“Red,” Freddy supplies, unhesitating. “You?”

“Red.”

“Like your hair?”

“Like yours. Favorite animal?”

“Snakes. Any kind of lizard.”

“Kitties.”

“Ohh,” fingers tenting. “I don’t do well with cats.”

“Not everyone does. Not fond of large dogs.”

“I got attacked by a canary once.”

“Birds are evil.” He turns the page. “Pick a number.”

“I feel like their beady little eyes just watch you. Eight.”

“Eight as well. Lucky number. Perfect square root and perfect symmetry. Also,” Rorschach licks his thumb to free himself of the superimposition of a lacy pink panty-line, “he is round.”

“He?”

“Eight. Like a snowman.”

It hadn’t been meant as a joke, but it rips a laugh out of Freddy anyway. His arm dangles off the edge of the bed and swings. “Here you are, the scariest son of a bitch in the city,” voice airy with wonder, “telling your cellmate you like the number eight because he reminds you of Frosty.”

“Hurm.”

“I set my Christmas tree on fire.”

“How?”

“Super drunk.”

“Incredible specimen of human competence, integrity, Krueger. Will take notes on tact from you.”

“Not all of us can be buff and sexy, Rorschach.”

“Pervert.”

“God, yeah.”

As poignant as the following attempts to ignore Freddy are, Freddy Krueger is not a man so easily ignored. No sooner does Rorschach’s nose find itself nestled back into the safety of the pages than Freddy’s leaning on the edge of his cot, legs swinging, giddy with the attention he’s been given today. Rorschach instantly regrets his generosity.

“How tall are you? Are you taller than me? Stand up, I wanna see if you’re taller than me.”

The corner of Rorschach’s mouth twitches down over his teeth. “No.”

“Come on, please,” high in his nose, whining. “I just wanna see.”

“No.”

“I’ll bum you a cigarette.”

“Don’t smoke.”

“I’ll get you some M&M's.”

“…”

So Rorschach stands, but it’s up to Freddy to come closer – not that Freddy seems to mind. Rorschach leans out of their shared space and Freddy invades it again despite the recoil, like it’s some kind of game. If he didn’t think it’d complicate things, Rorschach might’ve drowned him in the toilet bowl by now.

Toe to toe.

Nose to chin.

Rorschach looks up into Freddy’s eyes, offers a soft _“God damn it,_ ” and sits back down.


	4. SCUM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hands, reaching.
> 
> Cloth, binding.
> 
> Rorschach, snapping finger-bones.

“Now? Are we leaving now?”

Rorschach sits pants-up on the toilet seat, fingering through a Reader’s Digest, warming his last few candies in the palm of the other hand. He’d made a small bag stretch several days – tactic from childhood, Freddy thinks. Used to do the same thing himself with a handful of saltine crackers, when Underwood would get too twitchy on the belt.

Outside, footfalls. Heavy. Multiple. A man drives a pen into another man’s throat and the blood comes thin and fast into the air. Body’s hauled over the railing. Sound of impact. Screaming. Sirens.

The silhouette of Big Figure stalking down the dusty corridor, narrowly avoiding the violence with the help of his loyal meathead patrol.

Silence.

“No.” Rorschach says. “Wait.”

Leakage and livewires twist over the concrete like jungle vines and Freddy again remembers the tigers, Kathryn tucked under his arm, watching in wide-eyed fascination as the cat moved through the underbrush and into the river: unheard, unseen, unbroken. Tall vegetation blending stripes like illusory magic.

Freddy watches Rorschach stalk up to the cell door, swallowing the last of the M&M’s like pills, and feels his guts coil in.

Rorschach undoes the top half of his coveralls; pools the fabric over a pair of arms Freddy’s only ever seen in old movies and dirty dreams. The muscles strain as Rorschach rips into it, taut, tight, twitch lax again. He throws the shredded remnant over his nape like a towel, says something to Big Figure that Fred’s too numb to understand.

His fingers go gnarled in the paper sheets.

“Should I do that too?”

“Stay where you are.”

Freddy fidgets, but he stays.

Big Figure and his goons circle like a pack of wild dogs. It isn’t long before they’ve attracted an audience, all calling out for a piece of the turkey. Flash of conversation, mottled in the mess of it, until something is said that makes them disperse. Man with a circular saw comes from God knows where, separating out any stragglers. Rorschach undeterred. Rorschach steady, immovable, dangerous. The curve of his chest, and the delicate freckling of his shoulder-blades under the low, low cut of his undershirt. He says something else, something shittier; fury pulls hard on the goons like a bowstring until someone roars out and the tension finally snaps.

Hands, reaching.

Cloth, binding.

Rorschach, snapping finger-bones.

It happens fast. He blinks, nearly misses it. Red skin and slobber flying, then blood, then fat, then marrow, thick. Rorschach takes half of it on his face without flinching, and the hands dangle limp, bodyless, trapped still between the bars.

(Freddy thinks he’s falling in love.)

No time to sit on it, though – maybe for the best. Similarly violent lives have led them to similar patterns of thinking, and the way they have to think is _fast._ Krueger huddles in the bed, hands off the frame, alight with intrigue or morbid adoration. Both. With the breadth of his smile, you could just about count every one of his teeth. _Something’s coming._ Sparks bite the air like the first dredge of a midday forest fire. Blade shrieking on metal, pop of a lock, chin in hand, green vulture eyes waiting for a pass at the meat.

The cell door swings open on protesting hinges and the pigs rush in to be slaughtered, lined up real neat, one at a time.

Rorschach’s vision rolls to find a wire snaking under the bars. He directs the first man’s head clean into the ceramic bowl and leaves a perfectly head-shaped imprint in its wake. Water pools from the artificial wound, grows outwards towards the fray, swallowing first the shape of the body, then the second man's shoes, then the severed end of the wire-piece. 

Jump, palpate, convulsion, brain-fry, history.

Big Figure turns at a whispered _“Two-Nothing”_ and takes off alone into the dark.

“Leaving now,” Rorschach says, half to remind Freddy of their motive, half because he doesn’t know when they’ll get the luxury of an empty hall again.

For once in his life, Krueger’s happy to listen, laughing so hard he almost pukes.


	5. SKYLINE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We came as fast as we could,” Dreiberg insists, going rigid at the wrong end of their tension.
> 
> “As fast as you could,” Rorschach echoes. “Yes. That is why you stink of sex.”

The four do not speak in the owl-ship, opting to exchange distrustful glances from the corners of their eyes. 

Dreiberg asks - once - if Rorschach would like to introduce them to his friend. Rorschach, nodding towards Juspeczyk, asks Dreiberg if there is a problem – since Dreiberg is now accepting ‘ _plus-one_ ’s, and all.  
  
Dreiberg bristles. Glares at him from behind his goggles, as though Rorschach has asked something particularly absurd.  
  
“I think there’s a difference between bringing an old teammate along and asking us to babysit one of your buddies from _Sing Sing.”_ Dreiberg says it like the words have gone sour halfway off his tongue; Krueger, stationed dutifully at Rorschach’s side, lifts a brow and sucks his teeth.

“Old teammate,” Rorschach says. “Yes. That is why you stink of sex.”  
  
“We came here to save your life, Rorschach," Juspecyzk cuts in, knife-sharp with eyes to match. "The least you can do is show a little gratitude.”

“No gratitude for afterthoughts.”  
  
Krueger whistles lowly. Juspecyzk, who seemed to have forgotten his company, fixes him a scathing look. Her lips thin in a way that Rorschach recognizes; her mother is the same. It is the face of a _Jupiter female_ debating saying something cruel.  
  
“We came as fast as we could,” Dreiberg insists, going rigid at the wrong end of their tension.

“As fast as you could,” Rorschach echoes. “Yes. _That is why you stink of sex_.”  
  
It is here that Krueger tries to cover up a laugh with a snort, lifting his fist to his mouth. Biting it. Both Dreiberg and Juspecyzk glower at him, not sharing in his good humor. For his part, and to nobody’s surprise, Rorschach remains unaffected. He radiates cold, hostile _nothing -_ a lesser man would wither in his stare.

Dreiberg and Juspeczyk do not wither. Dreiberg and Juspeczyk stare back.  
  
“We came,” Dreiberg begs of him. They have had this argument far too many times. “And you’re safe. That’s the important thing.”

Sing Sing is a speck on the horizon before anybody speaks again.

“I don’t like them,” says Krueger to Kovacs, under his breath.

“Irrelevant now. Have errand to run.”

“An _errand?”_ Freddy parrots. “Right outta prison?”

“An errand,” Rorschach affirms, and does not explain until New York City’s skyline snuffs out the faint few stars in their blueblack sky.


	6. STERNUM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time spent with him suggests he is looking for an argument. The slope of his shoulders promises it will not come.

Rorschach does not ask for favors; he demands them. 

Krueger is to be deposited in an alleyway roughly three blocks from Kovacs’ tenement. He is to be escorted from there, by Rorschach, until they reach the relative safety of the Gunga Diner – another block from which Rorschach will be accepted back into the owl-ship, and will return to recoup with Dreiberg and Juspeczyk. 

That is his plan.

( _Rorschach’s plans are never without flaw._ )

“You know what I hate?” Postures Krueger. Rorschach’s eyes narrow, the ink creeping out from the epicenter of his thinning lips.

“Everything?”

“What I _hate,_ ” Fred interrupts, “is when people drop me off at locations I’ve never set foot in and tell me _fuck-all_ about what’s going on!” Krueger’s voice is shrill with panic, arms wrapped around his meagre frame as he stalks after the terror of the underworld. He is shivering. “I’m in _prison fatigues,”_ he grits out. “Did it not occur to you that someone might find that a _little_ suspicious?”

“If wanted my coat, could have asked.” It is not a question, nor an offering, but an insistence. Rorschach’s fingers have begun working the duster’s buttons. He does not wait for a response.

“I didn’t ask for _shit._ ” Freddy watches him, decides he is unhappy with where this is going, and exaggerates a pout. “It looks like it _smells bad_.”

“Mm.”

Rorschach casts a glance over either shoulder to be certain he is not being watched. A secondary glance is protocol. A third is paranoia … then the rustling of lapels, _peeling_ the garment from his breast.

“Rorschaaaaach,” comes the whine he’d expected, though Freddy’s already resigned himself to his fate. Time spent with him suggests he is looking for an argument. The slope of his shoulders promises it will not come. “I don’t want your fucking _charity,_ man.”

Silent, Rorschach drapes the offending article over Krueger’s shoulders, balls his fists into his vest-pockets, and overtakes him on the sidewalk.  
  
“Fuck off.”

“My pleasure.”

Freddy swathes himself in the coat.

The Gunga Diner’s sign has been broken for the better part of several years. The neon fixture, in its final, flickering breaths, reads only ‘ **_UNGA I ER._ **’ He halts Freddy before crossing towards it - one small, flat hand applied directly to the chest. “You,” he nods. “Payphone inside. Leave you now.”

Freddy’s face flushes white. He grasps Rorschach’s wrist hard enough to send needle-heat flying up the victim arm, shaking his head over and over and over again. “No,” he gasps. “No. You’re not telling me _shit._ Where are you _going?_ Who the fuck am I supposed to _call?_ ”

“Your family,” Rorschach replies, as if he is the only man in the world with no family on the other end of the line.

“They won’t wanna talk to me!” Freddy’s voice cracks, a quiver to his chin that hadn’t been before. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me? You think Loretta’s gonna let her _escaped convict ex-husband_ around our _kids?_ There’s a reason I didn’t get any visitations from them while I was in there, jackass!” 

Rorschach’s hand disappears from Freddy’s sternum. It follows, briefly, the sweeping bone of his chest … lowers, traces Krueger’s ribs. When Krueger's breath hitches beneath his palm, Rorschach remembers his sensibilities. They do not meet eyes when said hand is brought to his chin, where he props a finger against the subtle fold of his lip beneath his second skin. 

Thinking.

For once.

“... Did not consider this.”  
  
“No shit,” Freddy breathes out. “I have even less people on the outside to turn to than you do, and that’s saying something.” He brings his hands to his face. Cradles it. “I’m fucked,” Krueger mumbles. “Completely and utterly fucked. Someone’s gonna recognize me.”

“Freddy.” Rorschach does not touch him. It does not seem appropriate to touch him - as though he has not earned the right to attempt such comforts. The black settles into something indistinguishable, and he is quiet again, caught halfway between a streetlight and an alleyway’s dark. “Come.”

“Way to be cryptic,” Freddy says bitterly, smoothing his hands through his hair.

“World does not spin on gratification.”

Rorschach takes Freddy’s elbow, turns him left, and disappears in the direction of his tenement.


	7. SICKENED

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, he would like to hurt himself.

As grateful as Freddy knows he ought to be for a roof over his head, it wouldn’t have killed Rorschach to point him to the right apartment - or, hell, the right _floor_ \- before disappearing into the night. Then again, Rorschach never struck him as _explanation-oriented_. Asking the guy for more than ten words at a time might just give him a fucking coronary.

Per Rorschach’s instruction, Fred’s all alone, in a tiny little lobby, in a dirty old building, in a loud, scary city he knows next to nothing about, surrounded by people who know next to nothing about him.

It’s _so_ much better than Springwood.

Freddy spends the next ten minutes harassing other tenants over where to find the landlady before he gets his hook in someone weaselly enough to direct him to her door. Three sharp knocks summon a heavy-set broad with a scowl on her face and a series of purple hickies descending her neckline. From behind her nightgown, a number of small faces peer up at him. It takes everything he has not to shudder.

“Hey. Yeah. Hi,” comes his chipper, hands clasping in front of his lap. “I’m looking for the apartment of Walter Kovacs? I’m an investigative journalist.”

The woman’s face darkens, her grip on the door tightening till the wood groans with protest against her palm. “Walter Kovacs.” Her eyes go to slivers, like it scorns her to say it. “What the hell are you, a cop?”  
  
“No,” Freddy answers honestly. “P.I.,” Freddy lies.  
  
“412. Might wanna invest in a surgical mask before you go in there.” She coughs. Her breath is tar. The kids, cough, too - “You’re gonna need it.”  
  
Without waiting for an answer, she slams the door in his face. Freddy whistles, turns on his heel, shakes his head.

_Making friends everywhere you go, ain't you, Little Red?_

Back in the owl-ship, Daniel attempts to be friendly.

Laurie Juspeczyk does not.

Visible tremors wrack Rorschach’s fingers for the better part of his re-entry into Archie’s hull. Watching him long enough reveals that he is not only unresponsive to their attempts to speak to him, but that he is rocking, watching his glove-leather catch stars of artificial light.

He fears miscalculation, and many things else.

The media’s focus is on him, and mostly, it is on him alone. Despite the comparative _nobility_ of his particular criminal record, few prisoners at Sing Sing were as high-profile a capture ... or as mortifying an escape. Any who would have split the broadcasts with him, the riot - or he, himself - had killed. He assumes, for this reason, that Freddy will not be recognized. He assumes as well that any examinations of his apartment have been done and over within the past few weeks, door locked politely behind them in their lazy confidence that he would remain contained. He assumes they did not find his extra outfit. He assumes they did not find his second journal - the neater pages, carefully combed and possessing only his final drafts. He assumes this because it was not reported - …

… And he may have assumed too much.

For all he has gotten away with, there are a million risks that arise in the allowance of another human being in a space he’s only ever shared with himself. He has prioritized Krueger’s comfort over his own security, held his own prospective guilt in higher regard than analyzing the cons … If he’d spared it thought, and not emotion, he would never have let anyone stay. 

He is whispering to himself - **stupid, stupid** \- when suddenly Laurie is in the seat opposite him, arms crossed, curling her lip.

“Freddy Krueger is a _child molester,_ Rorschach. The guy you just brought in here raped and killed twenty-two kids.”

“He was framed,” says Rorschach, simply, uninterested in entertaining the notion of truth.

“They found the murder weapon in his basement. Do you want to explain how he was framed when they found the murder weapon in his basement? With his fingerprints all over it? Do you wanna tell me why you -”

“Same reason they found Moloch shot in head, with me stood beside the corpse.”

Laurie goes silent, but still, she is angry. He thinks he understands why she is angry - if he did not have faith in Krueger’s innocence, he knows he would be angry, too. He knows he would not have asked them to share the company of such a vile, twisted man as the Springwood Slasher. He knows that sharing company with _him_ is bad enough.

For all his faults - “Would not sympathize with someone so intensely disturbed.” It is a promise.

“You sympathized with Edward Blake,” she hisses, and Rorschach does not respond to her after this. He tries to, and cannot - the words will not come. He stares at his shoes.

Feels bile rising.

No argument.

Daniel gathers Laurie after a monumentally disconcerting silence. The revulsion in her eyes when she looks at Rorschach is matched only by the worry in Daniel’s own. She reminds Rorschach of his mother - her fists are balled, and he wonders if his refusal to speak with her further makes her want to hit him. He wonders if she would like to beat him, if she would like to hurt him, and if she maybe should. If it would better things.

He would not blame her. 

Sometimes, he would like to hurt himself.

Because God hates him, and life is a cosmic joke, Freddy finds the elevator, and the elevator’s busted. 

Krueger is forced to take an extra _two_ flights of stairs. 

By the time he locates 412, Freddy’s huffing and puffing and itching to shed Rorschach’s jacket - which, as promised, smells like the bowels of an NFL locker room. It doesn’t occur to him until he tests the knob that he probably should’ve asked for a key.  
  
“Oh, fuck _me._ ”

He tries again, and again with his shoulder driven into the unkempt face of it - tries the lock, tries to stick a fingernail into it, but no dice. He wishes he had a safety pin. He wishes he had _claws_.

A final, desperate slam into the door wrenches Freddy’s arm back so hard he feels his collarbone creak. Dejected, Freddy presses his forehead to the wood. Shuts his eyes. He’s not gonna pretend he’s some patron saint, but has he fucked up badly enough to deserve _this?_

( … Almost definitely. For sure. )

Soured, and having decided he’s more than earned a smoke, Krueger ventures back to the lobby and paces his way out the door. The fifth passerby refusing to bum him a cigarette sparks a miracle - Freddy looks up, to beg God just a _little_ mercy, and subsequently notices a rusty old fire escape stairwell snaking all the way up to the fated _floor-numero-cuatro._  
  
Freddy Krueger feels a smile fight across his face.


	8. SUFFOCATE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe he thinks Freddy’s a total basket case. Like Fred would know. Doesn’t speak squidgy wing-dings. Sue a guy. 

Freddy’s earliest memories are loyal to orphanages, foster homes - prisons, in their own right; testified to by the pale lashings over the bend of his back, old circular burns framing veiny wrists and inner thighs. Anyone with a working nose would be right to scorn the state of Kovacs’ apartment, but to Krueger? If it ain’t _Sing Sing,_ it’s a _Hampton’s Honeymoon Suite._

Landlady wasn’t kidding about the smell, though - almost knocks his scrawny ass right back out the window. Freddy coughs. Gags. Clamps a hand down over his mouth and nose, peering through the space between his ring and middle fingers. (Think the inside of Rorschach’s coat times _-fifty_ , with piss and vomit and blood thrown in to concoct the world’s most noxious cocktail _. Yum_ .) 

_Cops didn’t think to hire a_ **_cleaning crew?_ **

Then again, he figures, cops don’t think of much anything at all.

Brushing away tears, Freddy’s focus broadens on his new surroundings. The little studio looks like it’s been caught on the business end of a tornado - drawers and cabinets and linen closet thrown open, sparse contents laying strewn across the floor, half-dangling from rotting drawers and coiled like entrails at their bases. Nothing major, Fred decides, and certainly nothing insidious. A handful of crumpled clothing, sour from the rain. Mostly-empty bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Sewing needle plus unravelled thread. Gauze pads, some used - that’s just what he can see from where he’s standing in what-might-have-been the living room, should it have ever been _‘live’-able._

Next threshold crosses open into the kitchenette. Neighboring the kitchenette is a hovel in the wall - stained, gutted mattress, there. Freddy looks around for the bathroom, dread washing over him when he realizes he is - quite literally - _shit outta luck._ He’s gonna have to share with the _other_ grubby bastards who live in this dump, which is … Not Good. Freddy knows how he is in the bathroom. How men are. They’re gross. He’s gross. This entire tenement is -

 ** _Rrrgh._** \- kept under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose while he paces. Great! Wonderful! As if tonight could get _any_ fucking -

One of the floorboards groans louder than the others under his boot, coaxing his gaze down low.

_“Eehn?”_

Fred puts his weight on it again, and sure enough, it gives its best impersonation of a dying rat. Between the skeletons in his own closet and his intense observational skills ( _see: extreme paranoia_ ), he’s learned to spot a secret from a mile away. Besides, it ain’t like Rorschach ever has to _know_ Freddy went rooting through his shit, right? And even if he finds out, he can’t really get _mad_ at him for it. That’d be like blowing up at a hungry raccoon for looting around in a dumpster - Freddy can relate firsthand. 

Hunger hurts, and Freddy’s starved for information.

At least, that’s what’s got Freddy kneeling down, prying the aforementioned floorboard out of its wedge, and birthing the reveal of a small, ruddy leather-bound book. _Bingo!_ He picks it up and reads the cover over: _Journal, 1984-1985_. Freddy’s thumb traces the ringlet indentation on the left-hand side, and when he splits it open, he’s pleasantly surprised to catch the scent of old coffee climbing from the pages. He makes a mental note to look for some in the kitchen later, leafing absentmindedly along a series of mostly nonsensical entries, whether they be crazed rant or simply too poorly penned to be legible - waiting for something to jump out and catch his eye.

The word ‘ _Mother’_ does the trick.

**FEBRUARY 14th 1984**

**VALENTINE’S DAY. BUSIEST DAY OF YEAR FOR MOTHER ...**

  
  


Two lines in and Fred’s sweating bullets. 

**ONE YEAR, EIGHT, SENT AWAY ON ~~AIRRIND~~ ~~ERRIN~~ ERRAND. RECOGNIZED SEVERAL MY UNCLES WAITING OUTSIDE TO SEE HER. PAID HER ALREADY. DIDNT KNOW THEN, NOT WAITING FOR HER.**

**WAITING FOR ME.**

His fingers stick to the corners of the pages, trembling so terribly he nearly tears them off in his frantic race back to the beginning. He doesn’t know what he expects to find. Some kind of reprieve, maybe? Some kind of reassurance, no matter how small, that Rorschach’s life hadn’t been an even bigger horrorshow than his?

He doesn’t find mercy in the first entry, nor the second. By the time Freddy’s reached the last day of January, his stomach is threatening to turn itself over and empty into the floor. He throws the book back into its hiding spot, burned by it, snatching the plank up just to slam it into place. 

Freddy pants. Freddy cries. Freddy doesn’t realize he’s crying until something hot and wet cuts down his cheek and marrs itself into Rorschach’s lapels.

“Shit,” he says aloud. “Piss and fucking shit.”

He wipes his mouth, arise on shaky legs. Stumbles into the kitchen and makes a beeline towards the fridge. Doesn’t find a thing in there, of course - nothing he can eat without becoming some Cronenberg monster in the process. Freddy slams it shut, bringing his fists down on the door with a ripping snarl.

_“FUCK! CAN’T YOU LEAVE ME ONE THING? ONE FUCKING THING TO HELP ME TAKE CARE OF MYSELF?”_

Fists bashing into the other end of the wall - muffled threats and curses - which is right about when Freddy’s last nerve snaps. He pulls off his boot and whips it as hard as he can, seething. It hits the wall, followed by:

 _“SHUT UP! EVERYONE JUST SHUT THE HELL UP AND_ **_LEAVE ME ALONE_ ** _!”_

The shoe remembers gravity. As soon as it's clattered to a landing, the Freddy-Rorschach-Hole-In-The-Wall plunges into silence. 

(Faltering speech, poor structure, not the barest minimum of self-comfort - not that he’s witnessed. Not from Rorschach. Finally, he thinks he understands.)

(He wishes he didn’t understand.)

Shivering, feeling very small, Fred wraps his arms around his own heaving breast and forces his legs to Rorschach’s excuse for a bed. Can’t bring himself to lay down on the fucking thing; God knows how rank it’d be, and he isn’t in the mood to make friends with any cockroaches. Instead, Fred sits at the very edge, lets eyes drift to wall. It’s plastered with old newspapers, faded sailboat photography, frayed, yellow around edges. 

He studies the boats for a moment, wondering if Rorschach has some secret hobby he never bothered telling him about, before his attention shifts to some of the headliner pages Rorschach’s corked above his bed.

Surely something in his living space will have a little _humor._

**FATHER RAPES DAUGHTER**

**CAT CARCASS FOUND ROTTING IN GUNSHOT VICTIM’S WOMB**

Freddy’s breath catches in his throat. He shakes his head over and over again, climbing to his feet and stumbling towards the window.

“Nope, nope, nope. We’re done here. We’re closed.”

_“Krueger.”_

Freddy screams, tumbling back, hooking his ankle on the edge of the table-leg and dumping himself onto his ass. Rorschach cocks his head at him, apparently unfazed. Or maybe he thinks Freddy’s a total basket case. Like Fred would know. Doesn’t speak _squidgy wing-dings_. Sue a guy. 

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

For what feels like eternity, neither man so much as breathes. Then -

“Are missing shoe, Krueger.”

Pale cheeks fill in red. “I’m aware.” (He wasn’t.) “Thought you were with your buddies.” (Maybe if he smiles big enough, the walls will stop closing in.)

“Came to get items,” Rorschach replies, like it’s meant to be an explanation.

“Right.”

“Right,” says Rorschach, his own private echo.

The second stretch of quiet is so painful, so heavy, that Freddy thinks he might just crack. He scratches the top of his head. Breathes heavy out his nose. Rorschach exhales, too - shifts the ink into something different.

He wishes he could read his face.

He wishes he knew more than he did, and all the same, wishes he didn’t know anything about him at all.

“So, uh -” Fred offers, putting weight on one hip - “You ever consider a maid?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Major props to cutterjohns, who wrote, like, most of this chapter. We have a shared google doc. It is a sexy, sexy google doc.)


	9. SHARE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No sleep.”
> 
> “What the fuck are you on now?”
> 
> “Hung up, so no sleep. No sleep until it is done.”

“Look.” Fred’s on the kitchen counter, rubbing his knees. His legs swing, his ankles knock into the cabinet doors; Rorschach sits across from him between a mountain of unwashed dishes and the useless pillar of his fridge. “I just wanna know why the fuck you _kept_ that shit.”

Rorschach gapes at him, like it’s obvious – “Motivation.”

Whatever further argument, _explanation_ , Freddy demands - goes neglected. Without so much as shrugging off his coat and shoes, Rorschach makes like a ghost around a place he once called home. 

It is not his own anymore, as many things are not; the things that are, are hidden in his floorboards, behind mirrors, tucked under half-exposed pipes. He gathers them in too many pockets: starts with the things he concedes Freddy has found, things he won’t be curious enough to rip out of his hands. Headlines on the walls. (Rorschach peels back the cruddy tape, and long strips of wallpaper with it.)

In the window’s sliver of night sky, an elephant drifts overhead, Archimedes following in its wake.

“That’s not an answer,” comes the final protest. “That’s just not a fucking _answer,_ man.” 

Rorschach drops to his knees at the floor without reply. He begins to upheave a loose plank. It comes away too easily, with very little dust; elicits a soft, throaty sound of realization.

Freddy’s gut twists into itself. 

Gloved hand explores the journal’s spine, tracking indentations of Krueger’s grip in spaces between dust. 

One second passes.

The book hits Freddy solidly in the chest.

“You read it,” soft voice pardoned by the jab of an accusatory finger. If the impact didn’t hurt, the shallow dig of Rorschach’s nail into his diaphragm does.

“Of course I fucking read it! I’m just -” Fist around wrist, pushing Rorschach’s hand back to his side, where it belongs. His teeth bare, lips pulled back in an animal snarl of displeasure; he imagines that, behind his face, Rorschach’s done the same. “- I’m trying to understand what kind of _fucked up Ed Gein situation_ you’ve thrown me into. You told me to be fucking _smart_ about this, and I think it’d be pretty fucking _stupid_ not to read your diary when you’re hanging up the evidence like _Buffalo fucking Bill._ ”

“No sleep.”

“What the _fuck_ are you on now?”

“Hung up, so no sleep. No sleep until it is done.”

“Until _what’s_ done? Just what are you and your buddies trying to pull here, an _Ocean’s Eleven_?”

Rorschach, postured in the doorway like an unmanned puppet, shoves his balled fists into the pockets of his coat. Beneath the latex, he is sunken eye-sockets and the sharp, hollow bones of his cheeks, breathing like an animal on the verge of death.

Or tears.

(Possibly both.)

Freddy wonders what Rorschach knows that he does not; between Rorschach’s ragged exhalations and his own erratic pulse, he concludes he’s not ready to find out. Holding up his hands, he turns away from him. 

“Didn’t feel like sleeping anyway, man.”

“Me,” he offers, as if it is sufficient explanation - “Me, no sleep, not you.”

The thin, dirty walls glare yellow newspaper, suffocating Rorschach’s former life in the unconditioned thick of heat and sweat and mold. His bedframe is broken: fractured skeleton haloed by reminders of everyone he’d failed to save.

  
  


Daylight comes sifting through the blinds in narrow fragmentations. Rorschach has not left - not yet.

Maybe not for a while, then.

Freddy, curled against the wall, leafs through a bible Rorschach has not read in years. He is meticulous - not in scanning the passages, but in folding its pages in on themselves to form neat, alternating arrows. Rorschach is watching; Rorschach does not tell him to stop.

“They sent me to Jesus camp when I was ten.”

He does not look up at him. He does not specify who. Rorschach does not ask, his passive acceptance some grandiose statement of its own: “What year?”

“1950. New Jersey. I don’t know why. Just wanted to ship me off somewhere and it was - ” A breathless, humourless laugh, “fucking miserable.”

“Went also.” Finally, Rorschach collects the bible from Freddy’s hands, as if pulling a kitten from a storm drain - delicately. “Same year.” Places it at his bedside, laid to rest. “Summer? In Lebanon?”

“Summer in Lebanon.” A pause. 

Freddy lowers his hands to his lap, then stuffs them into his jeans, gaze settling on a gathering of dust bunnies in the far right corner of the room. Shadowed by the mask, Rorschach’s eyes pry into him, black wells pushing past the walls around his soul.

“You need to take that fucking thing off, man. I don’t know how you breathe and I’m sweating buckets just looking at you.”

“Breathe fine, sweat little. Protestant?”

“Catholic.” Freddy’s curses carry less vitriol than that singular word ever could. As always, there is Rorschach, his constant unaffected, predictable, familiar, mumbling:

“Catholic as well.”

And suddenly, despite prior nonchalance, Rorschach cannot look at him at all.

“So, boyscout, what were your offenses? They caught me setting stray cats on fire.” Freddy takes sudden interest in examining the dirt beneath his fingernails. He’s been more engaged in conversations about the weather. “Same reason I got sent there in the first place, funny enough. Don’t know why they thought it’d make any difference.”

“Notorious for picking fights.” Examination of shoes, then - mimicking Freddy - peeling off of glove, examination of nails. His own are short, surprisingly clean and white at the quik; he does not bite them, manifests anxiety in other ways. Like a jiggling left leg. (It’s jiggling now, kicking off the floor at his heel, tapping the weight of his leg against the ball of his foot.) “Lifted shirt to show bruises - wrists, hips,” spoken with a smile inherent, though Freddy cannot tell if it reaches his mouth. “Slapped on wrists for male-to-male indecency. Was ten, of course; little child … did not understand.”

“Yet the stuff that happened under the picnic tables just,” Freddy gestures, scoffing, “whooshed right over their heads.”

“They aren’t stupid. They knew. They did not want to get sued.” Matter-of-fact, and almost prideful, as if sharing some secret piece of knowledge only known amongst elites. “Sister Helena worst of them, silencing the children with most holiest metal ruler.”

Freddy’s teeth clench. Jaw pops. He seethes, knuckles turning white as they curl against his palm.

“Fucking bitch beat me black and blue for kissing another boy. Pissed blood for nearly a week after she was done with me.”

“Reprimanded for similar incident; funny - looked little like you.”

Long hush.

Tilt of head.

Freddy’s brows shoot up to his hairline. It comes out slowly, at first - a series of titters that devolve into croaky, disbelieving laughter. His eyes prickle, then burn. “No way.” He wipes his nose on his sleeve, shaking his head. Grinning like the lunatic they always said he was. “No _fucking_ way.”

He does not realize Rorschach is laughing with him until he turns to face him, graced with his unpracticed wheeze, the hung head, and the slightest shoulder-shake. 

( _There are no rulers, here. No priests. No nuns. No God. He could kiss him again just for that: for his pitiable attempt at expressing human emotion in a normal way. He could kiss him like he did when they were ten, just for being Walter Kovacs, the boy who doesn’t know how to laugh. He doesn’t kiss him._ )

He ogles, and chews his nails, and rubs his wrists until they’re sore.


	10. SMALL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stare.
> 
> Silence.
> 
> Separate.

“How big are your hands?” Asks Loretta, and Freddy meets her gaze with the same smirk that got them into this mess.

It is 1963 and they are both young and fresh in some kind of love; she lays beside him on his bedsheets like a lover, at least - face to face but not quite touching - her pregnant stomach keeping them apart.

They’ve shared a shower. Freddy is fair-skinned, ghoulishly so next to her, but there’s something pretty about the bend of his hip and how stark white it is in the lamplight, like the corner of a paper-ream. Loretta is detangling with her fingers, working short nails through the dark, tight curl of her natural hair. She abandons the task when Freddy extends his arm towards her to match it: pale palm meet palm.

She folds her entire fist shut around his, and they dissolve into laughter.

  
  


“How big are your hands?” Asks Daniel, and Laurie doesn’t even look at him.

They are in the owl-ship, Nixon is still president, the world balanced minutes to midnight. He sits on his chair with Laurie on his lap; she disentangles from his body when he speaks to her, and he wonders if it disappoints her that he’s not Jon or if she’s disappointed in herself.

Their honeymoon period is both all they have between them and practically nonexistent: kindling thrown into flame by sporadic bursts of wind in a campfire abandoned days ago. They smoulder, they spark, almost catch light, die again, but they can never seem to hold the candle. Maybe he wanted it to be romantic. Maybe he thought they’d finally kiss without the blind influence of sex. 

Maybe he just wanted to prove he was bigger than her, as if she needed the reminder.

Laurie Juspeczyk knows a mistake when she’s made one, even if she makes it again and again and again. Laurie Juspezcyk is tired of men trying to prove to her how small she is next to them.

Laurie Juspeczyk tells Daniel Dreiberg to land the ship, because she would like to leave, and Dreiberg - though wounded - complies.

  
  
  
  
  


“How big are your hands?” Asks Freddy, and Rorschach narrows his eyes behind his face.

“Small,” he answers, and uses his words: words are not preferable to silence, but they are preferable to touch. “You know this - we’ve compared size before.”

It is clear he does not grasp the implications (Freddy Krueger is flirting with him). It is also abundantly clear that he never has (Freddy Krueger has been hitting on him since they shared a cell). Rorschach is like a fighting dog that should have torn Freddy’s throat out when they met, Freddy the bait-chihuahua kicked into the mix just to whet the pitbull’s appetite. Rorschach does not understand affection. He does not understand its extension unto him - the ‘why’ and ‘what’ and ‘how’ of it. 

But for whatever reason, Rorschach has surrendered his nest, perched on one arm of his armchair, Freddy tucked up in the ratty seat of it. It doesn’t mean nothing. He might not know what ‘something’ is, but it doesn’t mean nothing to him.

“I guess, yeah -” licking his lips, swallowing down dry throat. “Yeah. I dunno, forget it.”

But Rorschach, stark white in the lamplight, ghoulishly so beside Krueger, extends an arm. Leather glove meet pale palm, Rorschach gritting his teeth and trying not to flinch away from the heat of Freddy’s skin.

Freddy folds his entire fist shut around Rorschach’s.

Stare.

Silence.

Separate.

_ Something. _


End file.
